"No—I suppose—forgive me. I wasn't thinking. May I walk you back to the house?"

"Thank you. I would rather not go back quite yet." She caught the rope on the calf's halter and curled it around her hand, looking down.

"Don't cry, Callie," he said stupidly.

"No, no. I won't. I'm not."

He curbed himself fiercely from saying more. He could hardly bear to stand and watch her hide her face under the bonnet. "Good afternoon, then," he said. "When you go in, tell the footman that I brought the roses for you, not for your sister."

He arrived back at Dove House in a dark disposi tion. The ponderous carriage, purchased for the sole purpose of providing a suitably glossy background for the Monceaux crest, was no more than a nuisance now. The modest stable at Dove House was too small to house it. His mother could not even rise from her bed, so there was little hope that she would see it. As he stepped down at the gate, he told the groom to take up Mrs. Rankin and drive the vehicle back to be lodged at the inn.

The innkeeper's wife was descending the stairs as he entered, clearly in some haste to depart. "Beg pardon, your grace, she's sleeping, and I must be back to put a turkey on the boil, or there'll be no supper in the parlor. Shall I send your manservant over to you?"

"My manservant?" Trev asked. "No, he's gone up to London since early this morning."

She gave him a shrewd look. "I hope you don't take it in bad part that I say so, but I fear he hasn't gone nowhere. He's made himself more than at home in the taproom all the living night and day."

"The taproom?" Trev repeated in astonishment. "You're mistaken. He slept here last night and left at dawn."

She cocked her head. "Did he, your grace? But he told us that you'd put him up at the Antlers for your convenience."

"I did no such—" He checked himself and then swore under his breath. "Tell me, how tall is this manservant? Is he a big man?"

"Big? No, sir, not at all. He's less than a middling sort, I'd say." She looked at him with a growing alarm. "He is yours, ain't he not? He hasn't choused me with some Banbury tale of you putting him up with us?"

Trev's mouth f lattened into a thin line. "Does he have a brindle dog with him?"

"Aye, that he does, one of them fightin' curs. We had to put it in the shed, and it barked all night until he took the thing out to walk at dawn. He said it was your grace's animal."

"Deuce take the fellow! It is not."

"Then he's not your servant, your grace?"